Marley, Holly Betsy;
(2025)
Medical Careers in the Victorian and Edwardian Post Office, 1855-1914.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
The Post Office Medical Service was established in 1855 with the appointment of a medical officer, Dr Waller Augustus Lewis at the London headquarters. This appointment was the catalyst for the creation of a UK wide network of full and parttime postal medical officers, which numbered over 2700 doctors by 1905. Despite being the largest occupational health service of its time, the Post Office Medical Service and the work of its medical officers has been overlooked. This thesis seeks to address this gap in the literature by examining the medical careers of the postal doctors, and by highlighting the significance of the Post Office as a medical employer in the Victorian and Edwardian periods. It uses a database of over 500 medical officers, identified through archival research, and takes a prosopographical approach to examine their medical training, career trajectories, and professional contributions. Following on from the examination of the medical officers’ qualifications and career trajectories, this thesis explores the roles and responsibilities of the postal medical staff, and examines how their medical practice was affected over time by Government policy and by the expansion of the postal service. The small number of academic works which discuss the postal medical service have concentrated on their roles as ‘medical police’, which greatly overlooks the multifaceted nature of their roles, and their significance to both the workers under their care and the Post Office as a Government institution. This thesis will shed light on the heterogeneous practices of the medical staff, and examine their employment of preventative measures, bedside medicine, and health education, in addition to their ‘policing’ and gatekeeping duties.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Medical Careers in the Victorian and Edwardian Post Office, 1855-1914 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2025. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10209545 |
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